I was born in Basel Switzerland, grew up in Johannesburg South-Africa and am now finding my feet in Vancouver Canada. I started my IT career by sheer coincidence in the early 1980’s during my Electrical Engineering studies, focusing on the BTOS/CTOS operating systems until I moved over primarily to Microsoft technologies in the early 90’s. Since then my passion has been to investigate, research and evangelize technology, best practices and striving for simplicity and maintainability in software engineering. Apart from writing books such as ".NET Enterprise Solutions … Best Practices” , “.NET Enterprise Solutions … Interoperability for the Connoisseur” and “Software Engineers on their way to Pluto”, my varied and extreme interests include scuba diving, cycling, science fiction, Star Wars, astronomy and most importantly my family. I am blessed with 3 boys (Thorsten-11, Jacques-14 and Alexander-18 as at 2010), an awesome wife and a phenomenal career.

… spot me in the early 80’s enjoying the army days in Switzerland 🙂

… even in the army I was working with chaps from all-over the world, just like the Rangers today. From left to right Christian from Luxembourg, Hans-Peter from Columbia, Thomas from South-Africa, me, Andre from the USA and Rodolfo from Columbia.

… my boys 2009/12. … family 2006 in Namibia.

What makes you “tick”?

The loss of our late son Alexander has been a huge wakeup call, resetting the ticking machine and making me appreciate the planet we live on, the wonderful and supportive friends, our fragile lives and the fact Rangers are committing their personal (special) time to Rangers projects. Rangers you “rock”!

Those working with me on projects I am responsible for will have to get used to codenames that relate to raptors, because Alexander was passionate about aviation and eagles in particular.

The quest for simplicity, solutions, knowledge and new frontiers has been driving me since the early 80’s and will will probably doom me for the rest of my existence on this wonderful planet. Doom is misleading, because quite frankly I cannot see myself ever retiring and working in the world of Information Technology is creating endless opportunities.

Where do you live?

A lovely village called Ladner, in Delta, Vancouver, Canada.

Where is the place you call home?

Home is where my family is.

Why are you active in the Rangers program?

Since the early days of Visual Studio I have been fascinated of the technology and am devoted to the Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio products. Thos who know me will understand that information sharing, awareness and solving IT problems are my daily injection of energy, passion and commitment and the Rangers program and Rangers family is enabling me to

What is the best Rangers project you worked on and why?

The first Rangers project I worked on was one of the first versions of the Rangers Branching Guidance, but my top favourites are the TSF Integration Platform and the Quick Reference Guidance. The former was a challenging project that allowed me to work closely with the product group and is delivering huge value-add today, while the latter proved a lot of sceptics wrong and highlighted the value and acceptance of the quick reference poster visualization dream.

“The” favourite project is a tough question, but is probably the latest project I am responsible for as Dev Lead 🙂